5/5 ★ – Fanan92's review of The Shape of Things.

- Time played: about 7h. - Played on PC with a gaming mouse. - Also available on Nintendo switch. - Developer: Hyper Three Studio. - Publisher: Maple Whispering Limited. The shape of things is a unique 3D puzzle game that the developer described it that it is inspired by the Rubik’s cube puzzle, but don’t worry the puzzles in this game are not difficult and impossible like Rubik’s cube, but instead it is very easy, fun, relaxing, and addicting, and if you bought the DLC with the base game then you will have a total of about 7 hours of fun. The game is very unique because you don’t start the puzzles straightaway, but instead you have to pay money to a gacha machine and collect the gachapon that comes out of it, and after revealing what is inside of it, a new world is unlocked, and then you can go and play the puzzles inside this world. I think that this gameplay loop is very good because it makes the game addicting and nonlinear, you can start at any order you like as long as you have money to unlock new worlds, and don’t worry, when I say money I don’t mean real money, it is just imaginary money that you gain each time you solve a puzzle. Now I will talk about the puzzles themselves. Each time you start a puzzle it will show up divided into individual pieces and not connected to each other properly, your job it to connect the pieces to make them into an identifiable shape, and you do that by clicking, dragging, rotating, scaling, and so on. This makes the puzzles so fun and interactable, and it also makes it relaxing because there is no time pressure, you can take as much time as you like. What I like about the game is that it is very accessible, because if you are playing it on PC then all you need is one hand for the mouse, and the developer said in the steam store page that the other hand can be used for a hot drink, which I think is very cute and funny. You can also play the game with an Xbox controller if that’s your thing. There are so many cool things about the game like the beautiful art style and the relaxing music, there are also more cool things but I don’t want to spoil them for you, you have to discover them by yourself. There are no negatives about the game, except for one small thing, which is when I finish putting the pieces of the puzzle together, the game won’t register that I am finished, so I end up moving the pieces a little bit to win and move one to the next puzzle. This happened to me a couple of times and I wish if the developer can fix it, because I can see some people get frustrated by this. This is not a major problem because it can be fixed by the player, but it is something to put in mind. The shape of things is a unique puzzle game that is very easy, relaxing, fun and beautiful, and I will recommend it to someone that wants to play a puzzle game that is different from the other puzzle games out there, and does not make them rage quit like with real Rubik’s cube.